


let the sea claim you

by jamespadfoot



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Dark Thoughts, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4138317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamespadfoot/pseuds/jamespadfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night she disappears, he succumbs to his own brand of darkness. Just for one night, he wants to stop feeling. Just for one night, he wants to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let the sea claim you

He’s chased the accursed blade for  _centuries_ , constantly just out of reach and beyond his grasp, and now, it is given freely to him, with no argument or even a remark. It is David, who picks up the dagger when Killian can’t do anything short of force the air in and out of his nose as horror and pain and anger swirls through him much like the smoke that stole his beloved.

It is David, who breathes her name on a broken whisper, as Killian struggles to stand. It is David, who traces his fingers over his daughter’s name as if he may erase her curse, when Killian finds it hard to see from the tears pricking his eyes.

And it is David, who places the dagger in his hand, manipulating his grip so Killian is the one holding the terrible blade, a low and quiet “We’ll find a way,” said in a promise that sounds too broken for even Prince Charming too keep.

He doesn’t say a word, just brings the Dark One’s dagger to his chest, sliding it through the front of his jacket pocket, where it rests heavily above his chest. It’s sharp, he thinks distantly, and realises it’s because he’s grazed himself just a little, hands shaking with a feeling he is too numb to feel.

He doesn’t have to say a word for them both to know that he’d do everything he can, would give his life,  _has_  given his life to keep her (and Henry) safe. Has it only been a day since the very same man that is now trusting his daughter’s tether was the one to plunge a broadsword through his heart?

It’s ironic, he thinks, that that somehow hurt less.

“I… I should tell Henry,” Regina says, sounding shell-shocked, and Killian turns, watches the way she flinches slightly when she meets his gaze, very aware of what has been sacrificed so  _she_  can live freely. He wants to scream at her, but his heart hurts more - for the boy, who has only just saved the day to find that there’s no such thing as a happy ending.

It’s a terrible lesson to learn, Killian thinks as he stands there in the middle of the street with the dagger heavy in his breast pocket and David and Snow to his side, crying and holding each other while Regina tugs on Robin’s hand to the diner and it hits him, again, that not only is he once again all alone - he’s lost his happy ending.

_Villains don’t get happy endings._

Then again, neither do heroes, he thinks, sparing a glance at the Charmings who are whispering now, and it’s the way they’re talking, with words but also in their gazes, that finally spurs his lead-filled legs to move.

It’s not often he’s loss for words, and he knows he should comfort the lad, but he can’t, it’s too raw, and he wouldn’t know what to say. As it stands, he manages a nod to the prince, and walks off, ignoring the looks of worry her parents throw his way. He’s only grateful that he doesn’t have to decline their offer (which will come soon, he’s sure of it) to bunk in the loft - he can’t, there’s too much of her, them, there.

He sinks into the comfort of the Jolly, fishing out the bottomless flask of rum that’s been his salvation during lonely nights and angry days for centuries. The alcohol had filled the void of nothingness - there’s a difference, he knows, to being aware of feeling nothing, and feeling nothing because it’s drowned by the burning taste of honeyed rum.

And he tells himself just for tonight, just for tonight, he will yield to the blackness and the void and closest thing to not feeling he can come to. Back to days when he had first discovered (and overindulged) in rum.

Gentleman Starkey, who’d been of noble birth, had been the only one learned enough to warn Killian about death by drink, the slow and painful agony that could befall a man. He couldn’t have possibly known that Killian understood more than most, what with David Jones’ drinking problem and subsequent descent into illness and violence.

And there had been many a time when Killian had been no better than his lout of a father, only alive because Starkey had learned well from a healer, had had at his disposal an extremely valuable recipe to countermeasure the effects of drink.

Starkey is of course long gone now, had succumbed to death rather cheerfully just before Regina had cast her blasted curse. The flask has refilled itself twice, and Killian can see sounds now, there’s a hazy yellow for the sounds of waves rocking against the hull, and red for way the crescent moon peeks into the cabin.

It’s when he sees green does he choke, because  _it’s the wrong shade, her’s are jade, and gold, and mossy like a forest,_ and Killian can’t breathe because there’s water in his lungs (or is that rum?) and sobs wracking through his body, and  _why is he feeling when the rum is to numb?_

And then he’s choking, choking even as his hand shoves the flask in his mouth, because he needs to drink but it’s becoming physically impossible, the liquid is spilling from his lips and splashing to his floor, or is he the one on the floor?

_I’m trying to drown myself,_ he thinks, and he’s coughing, lungs burning and stomach cramping and he’d laugh at the absurdity of trying to drown on a ship above water in rum, but it’s also poetic, a one-handed pirate with a drinking problem and a life not meant for love or family but…

_She loves him. I love you,_ she’d said.

Killian shuts his eyes, using the last of his sanity to fling the flask away from him where it thuds heavily against something. She loves him. He may not be worthy of it, but  _she loves him._

He’s not dying until he can say it back. This isn’t like the last time - this time there’s  _hope._ She’s not dead. Just lost.

And this revelation is enough of an impetus for him to rise to find the boy and family, but as much as his mind is in a terrible state of lucidity - like when the day transforms from a hazy, cloudy day to cloudless in a blink of an eye, so Killian too feels like everything is  _too_ clear, too bright, and his eyes hurt and his nose hurts, and his chest hurts and his clothes are wet and soaked with the rum that should have never seen light of day and … what was he thinking about?

Getting up.

He needs to get up, but he’s three flasks deep and Starkey had warned him once on drinking too much too fast, and hadn’t he warned Killian that his.. what was it… well, some part inside him that kept the alcohol from poisoning him could simply stop, and he’d die, and oh god, he can’t die, not before he helps Henry find Merlin, who is the only one who can help Emma, and oh Emma, beautiful, perfect, sweet, fiesty, fiery, Emma.

But he can’t make his body work. So he lies there instead, unable to speak or move as memories move through his brain rapidly as if he’s flicking through the Netflix without stopping on a single moving picture, images of blonde hair and green eyes and a young boy and right now, right now he needs a moment to sink, but when he wakes, he’ll be better. When he wakes, that’s when the fight begins once again. He’s not leaving her, not as long as he lives. But just right now, the darkness is a welcome old friend.

* *

It’s after, much, much later, after Camelot and wizards who speak in riddles and  _dragons_ , does Emma bring it up.

“That first night, the night it happened,” she starts, fingers trailing up and down his chest soothingly, “Dad said you…”

She trails off, leaving him the choice to answer as he sees fit. She’s chosen an opportune moment to ask, in low light amidst sleepy pillow-talk, where he is most honest with her (he always tell her the truth, but he’s never as honest as he is after he’s satiated).

“I’m not proud of my behaviour then,” he says, unable to ignore the pinch in his chest as he remembers the absolute desolation he’d felt that night. A different kind of sadness, a different kind of lost.

“Hey,” she says, bringing him back firmly in the now, “I’m here. I’m not leaving you, ever? Okay?”

“Okay,” he agrees, even though he knows it’s not a promise she can easily make or keep - especially given Storybrooke’s penchant for disasters.

“He said you tried to drown yourself in rum,” she pushes on, something in her tone telling him that as light as her words are, David had for inexplicable reasons, deemed appropriate to inform his daughter on just how much of a mess Killian had been.

“I was thankfully unsuccessful.”

“Killian. My mother had to nurse you back to consciousness. Dad said you were hardly breathing, that you could have  _died_  from alcohol poisoning.”

“It seems I’m not as young as I used to be,” he says, running his hand up and down her bare shoulder, “it affected me more than I anticipated.”

She sighs, clearly frustrated with his inability to appreciate the severity of almost (accidentally?) killing himself (he does, he did, had been downright terrified that morning when he’d woken and felt like death, able only to focus on getting to Henry and finding Emma).

“Just promise me you’ll stop. Or slow down. And  _never_ let it get that bad, ever again.”

“Never leave me like that again,” he counters, because he hasn’t touched his flask in weeks since she’s returned.

“Deal. Shall we seal it with a pirate’s oath?” she asks after a while of silence, having deemed his compliant expression enough to put the matter to rest.

He raises an eyebrow at her, “And what exactly, is a pirate’s oath?”

“Shouldn’t you know, you’re a pirate!”

He rolls his eyes, pressing a light kiss to her nose. “There,” he says, “and  _real_ pirates don’t swear oaths, Swan, they just live by a code.”

“Well, if that’s the case, we should make our own pirate’s oath.”

He shifts, their hips aligning, and with a devilish smile, tells her that he can think of a very good way to  _join_  in an oath, punctuating the suggestion with another strategic roll of his hips. For his troubles, she swats his chest.

“Nose kisses,” she says after a moment, “I like that.”

“I, Killian Jones, solemnly swear on pirate’s oath, to protect all that which is yours, which includes my heart and soul and body,” he says without preamble, ending his words with a gentle kiss to her nose.

When he pulls back, he’s unsurprised to the expression of overwhelmed shock on her face, but it lasts only for several seconds before she darts forward, lips a hair breadth from his own as she whispers, “I will love you, forever,” she says, short and simple and sweet, and it feels more like a recital of marriage vows performed in the intimacy of a bedroom of two than it does anything else.

When her lips move upward to land on his nose, he knows it will be these vows he remembers when their children ask him about the day they wed.


End file.
